Snippets of phrases

I have a friend, Lyolka. Well, that's what everyone called her since school, but seriously, her name is Olga Vladimirovna. Something like this happened to her—we're still wondering what's going on? Coincidence or not?

And here's what happened.

Lyolka got married right after school to our classmate, Dimka. We'd all been friends since childhood, and they ended up loving each other. So they lived together for 11 years, and then cancer took him. He died very hard, and after we buried him, I took Lyolka home with me so she wouldn't be alone in the apartment and go crazy. And it's more fun together. I was a single woman at the time, both of us were 28, no children, no families. She never dreamed of Dimka, not once. Usually, after such incidents, relatives dream of me, some even visit, but here—silence. My Lyolya was even starting to resent him. We decided to go to the cemetery.

So, there she was, and suddenly the words burst out of her: "Where did you go? You left me alone, you don't talk to me! Why don't I dream about you, why don't you come..." And as soon as she said this, a man's voice shouted right behind us: "Don't cry, you fool!" We both jumped in surprise! We turned around, and there was just a man passing by, shouting into his cell phone. Well, a coincidence, we thought. But no such luck. From that day on, Lyolya was inundated with coincidences.

She was looking through her wedding album, and I was sitting there, staring at the TV. Lyolya must have gotten to the wedding photos, and then she burst out again—she said: "We were such a beautiful couple, and now I'll be left alone." I'm flipping through the channels, and then I see the phrase: "You won't be alone! I'm with you!" Some movie was playing, and I turned it on right when I saw that phrase.

We're sitting in the kitchen, we bought some wine, it's been 40 days already, we're commemorating him. Lyolka is smoking out the window, sighing, and says to me, "And now, if he were alive, we'd be hanging out together." And then the immediate response from the street: "Well, it wasn't meant to be, then, since it happened this way!" We looked out from my second floor—and there were guys fixing cars.

And there have been so many similar incidents... How is it that she keeps getting replies that seem to come from him? It's impossible for such coincidences to happen! I even got a couple of replies from Dimka. We're at the store, choosing a photo frame, and I ask her, "What should I buy you or give you to make you smile?" — and then a couple walks past, saying, "Thank you for taking care of her."

So our whole year flew by, filled with these coincidences. We weren't even surprised anymore.

And the last incident gave us both hope. I don't know how to explain all these fragmentary replies from the other world, but I'm already beginning to believe that Dimka communicates with us this way. Lyolka and I were having dinner in the kitchen, opening some wine, talking about everything, and then decided to go out onto the balcony for a smoke. We sat down on stools, and just as I struck a lighter, I heard a stern male voice from somewhere in the distance: "Girls, stop smoking, you still have children to have." Lyolka and I exchanged glances, peered over the railing—in the distance, a man was telling some young girls the truth about the dangers of smoking; he definitely couldn't see us.

So that's how we quit smoking. And recently we met two interesting guys. Perhaps life will change for the better.